All Quiet on the Western Front
by greatunironic
Summary: When the world depended on them, they depended on each other.


Title: All Quiet on the Western Front 

Author: greatunironic

Rated: PG

Disclaimer: I don't own anyone you recognize.

Feedback: YES! Tell me if I should write a sequel or not.

Summary: When the world depended on them, they depended on each other.

Etc.: I'm not too sure about this one. Part Two is really shaky to me. I think I like it anyway, though. Part titles are lyrics from the song 'Ashes to Ashes' by The Wallflowers. And I'm not sure if I should write a sequel to this. I think I may, just to explore this future.

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1. ashes to ashes

"I don't think we'll be coming back."

He's quiet when he says it. Real quiet. He doesn't want anyone to hear him. The part of me that can still laugh does. Who's gonna hear us? It's just me and him right here. We're all alone in the mess hall at oh-four-hundred and we're talking, quietly.

"Why don't yew think will come back?" I ask. He shakes his head.

"I don't want to come back."

"Please don't talk like that." I want to cry; I can't lose him too.

He looks like he might cry. I take his hand and I know what he's going to say before he says it. "I don't want to live like this anymore." I mouth the words as he says them. "This place has just become so horrible." The next part shocks me though. "And a part of me will always long for the time when I had peace instead of passion."

I want to ask him when he had peace. I want to ask when he didn't have passion. I want to ask him how an armoury officer could want peace. I want to ask him how he can love to destroy things so much and want peace at the same time. I don't because he's talking again.

"But I know that if this is ever over and if we are alive, another part of me will long for the time when I had passion instead peace."

We don't say anything else for a while. We just kind of sit here. In the quiet. All quiet on the western front. A morbid bit of me says that we're quiet as corpses, that we're still as death. If I wasn't thinking about this tonight, I would have laughed. But it's tonight that I think these thoughts and it's tomorrow that we might die.

It's hard to comprehend that tonight may be the last night I will ever be here, in this world. Part of me says that I should just go and be crazy, run through the ship naked. And I agree. I should go be crazy. Carpe diem. Seize the day.

I look at Malcolm, an idea forming. I grab his face and kiss him as hard as I could. He kind of freezes while I kiss him, like he doesn't understand. He probably doesn't. Really, one of his superior officers is laying one on him; I'd be shocked too. I mean, if Jon just walked up to me in engineering and gave me one right on the lips, I'd think he was insane. Then I realize that I've been holding on for far too long and break off.

He stares at me like he's never quite seen anything like me before. And then he punches me. "What the hell was that for!"

"Yew hit me!" I wail.

"You kissed me!" he yells back.

"I think yew broke mah nose!" I cry. He looks really pissed so I start laughing. He starts to laugh too, because he's just realizing that, yes, this could be the last time we're ever going to be able to do anything that silly or stupid ever again. We laugh until we start crying and then we're sobbing on the floor because tomorrow we're going to die.

We stop sobbing eventually and it's now oh-four-twenty-five. I look at him and he looks at me. He smiles a watery smile and whispers, "You're a very nice kisser."

I choke on something that's a cross between a laugh and a sob. I whisper "thank yew" and he looks away. He speaks again after a minute and it looks like he's addressing the wall. He's speaking so seriously and yet so casually I think he's telling me tomorrow's forecast for Earth.

"Should I do that to Julia? Because I think I'm in love with her."

It doesn't surprise me. I was pretty sure he was in love with her for a while now. And I'm pretty sure she loves him too. I think it's amusing that he's fallen for something he despises so much. Normally, I'd say yes, go for it, buddy. But tomorrow we're going to die and I don't know if a kiss will do more harm than good.

"Do it." I tell him to anyway, against my better judgment, because I'm hoping she'll brush it off as one of his eccentricities. "Yew kiss Julia."

Later, we've stopped sitting in silence and we've left the mess because other people have started to show up. We can't stand their sympathetic eyes. They know we're leaving and we probably won't be coming back again. That's when we make our way to the transporter room. A lot of the senior crew is there. The captain, T'Pol, Ensign Sato, Ensign Mayweather, Doctor Phlox, and others. Julia Bashir's there too. So are Fritz Schlosser and David Webster.

I go and stand in the transporter. I hate this thing, but it's necessary. I watch Malcolm. He walks up to Julia and he kisses her. He kisses her so hard that I think he's trying to suffocate them both.

Because, now, I know that we're definitely not coming back.

Ever.

2. and six feet under

Six months.

Six months and fifteen days.

Six months and fifteen days and seven hours.

Six months and fifteen days and seven hours and twenty-two minutes.

Six months and fifteen days and seven hours and twenty-two minutes and seconds.

That's how long we've been in the Xindi internment camp. Concentration camp. Some days, we think they're like the Nazis and that everyone here, trapped, are the Jews and Gypsies and artists and poets that were locked up during the Holocaust. I think they've even got gas chambers.

I look at the people here and I hate the Xindi even more. We've come to know these people, Malcolm and I. We know their stories. We know what the Xindi have done to their worlds and they know what they've done to ours.

I wish this was over. I look at Malcolm and I hate them even more. He's pale and thin and his leg's broken. I think I have a concussion.

The days on this planet are long, very long. We work almost all of it. The food here is horrible. Malcolm says that these are the same conditions that the Jews suffered at the hands of the Nazis. I have to wonder how he knows all this. I asked him too one day. He told me that an ancestor of his was sent to Treblinka.

I have to think that we're never going to get rescued from here. That we're going to die here. Even if we get rescued, will we ever be the same?

3. face down in a box

My arm is around his waist and his is around my neck as we walk down the corridor. Or, more accurately, as I walk down the corridor and he limps along beside me. We stumble. He can't walk on his own yet and I'm still kind of dizzy. It's like the blind leading the blind. Eventually, we make it to the mess hall and everyone is there. He flinches and I can barely contain mine; we're still not used to lots of people after our rescue.

Later, we stand before the captain and he makes a speech on how brave we were for that half a year in the camp, and how all the deaths of all those people that were with us in the camp were justified when we were rescued and the camp was destroyed. We look at each other and we know that all this death wasn't what we wanted.

"I am proud to have you on my ship. And I am proud to be the one to put these pips on the two of you, Executive Commander Tucker, Lieutenant Commander Reed."

They clap and we look at each other. This isn't what we wanted the deaths of our friends to end in.

We talk about it later, in my quarters. We agree that this isn't what we wanted. We didn't want them to die, not for us, not for anyone. We didn't want any of them to die: not the people in the camp, not the people on Earth, not even the Xindi. Because, when we look back on what we've been through and all the death and destruction we've seen, we can't find the line that separated us from them. In truth, we don't see how we're any different.

4. i don't remember you from any of those books

Once he and I were children, before this happened.


End file.
